Cronus wrote:
Can't quite believe I'm doing this, but there we go...
Heheh, don't be ashamed, it's perfectly normal!
Cronus wrote:
Brough is about 2 metres to the left of the upright. That is clear to both sides of the argument. The ball crosses the touchline just after picture 3, possibly even after picture 4, certainly no earlier.
Because you are looking THROUGH the uprights, the ball appears to be between them and that's where the confusion lies. However, as it reaches and passes the posts it is clearly outside them.
I do not believ so, for the simple reason that the ball was not bound to go above the uprights. If Brough had kicked it on a lower path, and it never had gone above the uprights (but other than that, stayed on exactly the same line) then i don't see how you could possibly conclude it could somehow have moved wide. I repeat, there is no appreciable L to R movement of the ball during the first part of its journey.
Cronus wrote:
If it had been a successful drop goal, the ball should never appear outside the post from the perspective of the camera.
That is the fatal flaw in your argument. You ignore perspective. As it nears the cameraman, the ball inevitably moves well outside the line of the posts and so drawing vertical lines from the illustrated position does not help. I did previously explain this issue, and also posted an image which shows this, here it is again:
The ball in this image is now, from the cameraman's perspective, in a direction well wide of the posts. Any ball kicked in the direction of the cameraman will as it approaches him, eventually "appear outside the post from the perspective of the camera" except for a direct hit on him.
I would ask you to hazard a guess how far to his right from a straight line that ball is, though. I wouldn't say much more than a metre or so myself. As the width of the posts is 5.5 metres, this is another indicator that he DG was good, even allowing for Brough's field position. Don't forget, we know the cameraman is dead centre.
As for the ref's position, I agree with those who think Bentham did not by any means have the best view, he had a glance at a ball way above his head, standing facing 45 degrees or so into the field of play, and thus having to lean his head back and effectively look up past the vertical behind himself. I do not side with those who think the decision was anything other than honest, though.
Is there any way to measure how far to the right of the pitch centre line the ball ended up, though?
Maybe yes.
It occurred to me that we have some definite information with regard to that last image:
1. We know that the camera is dead centre in relation to the pitch. We can see this by looking down th pitch. The camera is right in the middle of both sets of posts.
2. We know the dimensions of a regulation rugby league ball.
If we know how many balls' width the ball is from centre, we know ho far it ended up from the centre line of the pitch. I have therefore simply replicated the image of the ball, and as you can see, the answer is, approx. 7 balls width from the Centre line.
Making an approximation of 200mm per ball, we can estimate that the ball ENDED UP only 1.4 metres or thereabouts from in line with the centre of the pitch. We know when kicked it was maybe 4 or 5 metres from the centre line of the pitch.
It doesn't matter how far away the ball is from the camera. As long as all the virtual balls are identical, we can measure, and due to the camera being central we can know for sure how wide out the "real" ball was at this point.
QED?
